Wild Pitch: The New Wave of R&B

We’re living in a post-The Weeknd world. After Abel Tesfaye’s and Frank Ocean’s success last year, a new breed of innovative R&B artists emerged. It could be a coincidence or just really good timing, but if you listen to Julian, JMSN and Scott Kidd, you can’t deny that there is a strong The Weeknd influence in their work. Even Usher surprised us this year with his Diplo collaboration on “Climax”. We’re all anticipating his next album, that is scheduled to come out this year, as it might change the current state of commercial R&B. We hope that mainstream artists such as Rihanna, Rita Ora and Chris Brown will ditch the David Guetta-like beats and go back to the sound of 90s and early 00s R&B.

To celebrate this new “movement” MTHRFNKR made a little mix to introduce you to the most exciting alternative R&B newcomers. We also included “What You Need” by The Weeknd and Usher’s “Climax” to give you a contrast between 2011 and 2012 and how it’s all becoming one breed of innovative artists that have a similar dark sound in their work.

Wild Pitch is a series in which we invite some of our most trusted internet friends to curate mixes for PMA readers. This installment features MTHRFNKR, a music blog dedicated to “intelligent contemporary music.”